Google+ A successful route to failure?

I’ve been playing around with Google+ and I like it; it’s clean, fresh and I’m not spammed with events from people I don’t know, or pestered with how many farms you’ve grown. I feel I could enjoy my time there, but is that mainly because it’s quiet?

I really like the idea of circles¹, you no longer have to bore your friends with work chat or spam you colleagues with how much you can’t wait until the weekend; it’s easy to select which circle or circles see your post when you publish it. The simple design is easy on the eye and great to use and I’ve also read that hangouts² work very well.

Despite these unique features and surprisingly nice design, my underlying thought is that Google+ will not succeed.

A major concern for some people may be that Google’s foundations are as an advertising company. In comparison to Facebook ³, who’s goal was social media, this was far from Google’s first intentions. Google hasn’t come up with a great idea for a site, it has come up with a great resource to get information, purely in defence from what information Facebook has on every individual and how it utilises it.

However, I don’t think these privacy issues would stop mass adoption by the average joe, what I do believe would Dave Winer explains perfectly; “As with most social phenomena, social-network success tends to happen more organically and unpredictably than anyone is able to artificially create by throwing money at it.”

Most people will not use multiple social networks and especially two [Google & Facebook] that are very similar. Your friend or family member log on to interact with other friends or family; they look at their photos, see how they are getting on or send them a message. The main reason people are locked in, because Facebook is the social network for the masses ⁴ and no one wants to spend their time on logging on to a blank wall with no friends on the service, no matter how good the features are or how beautiful the design is.